Orson Scott Card: Idiot

Orson Scott Card is not a bad science fiction writer. I really liked Ender's Game, for instance, but I read it at an age when it could reasonably be considered a power fantasy. But Card also believes that our entire understanding of American history is wrong and that a convicted con man received secret messages from an angel on some golden tablets only he could see. In other words, Card's a Mormon. Which is why his recent column in the Mormon Times, "State job is not to redefine marriage", should really come as no surprise. Card claims that granting gay people the right to marry "marks the end of democracy in America", and his reasoning is as ludicrous as his premise. He says that judges shouldn't have the right to strike down laws against gay marriage, but he fails to realize that the legislative branch always has the right to strike down laws that are unconstitutional. He says that the writers of various state constitutions could not possibly have conceived of marriage being defined as anything other than a man/woman bond, but does that also mean black people shouldn't be granted constitutional rights? After all, the whole "all men are created equal" line surely wasn't meant to include the slaves who tended to the man who wrote it. Card goes on to talk about how any abortion up to pureeing a baby as it's being born is now legal and how people aren't allowed to pray in public anymore. None of this is true, but then, all of it is more believable than the Book of Mormon. Read his whole blithering piece here.